Any downsides in disabling Volume Shadow Copies?

So true. The absolute best feature for emergency recovery stands out alone in a single version, the Windows 8.1 which i am very proud of their decision to add it. The implementation of Custom Refresh/Reset feature is perhaps the most conscientious customer assisted fallback protection Microsoft ever got right and is reliable without fail. I must have turned to it dozens of times over the years and it always perfectly recovered and renewed Windows without dumping a user's programs into invisible deletion but only removed Program Files, everything else is retained making it useful to restore their setup with a few reinstalls and not a single desktop app touched. Why those lamebrains scuttled that fantastic feature instead of keeping it going forward was their undoing and a massive huge mistake. A mistake that Image Backup Industry was glad to see. It keeps you from having to absolutely resort to restoring an image backup but instead could use Custom Refresh or Reset and a user is back in business as though they installed their system afresh.

One of the chief reasons i remain very locked in on 8.1 through 10 and now 11.

 

I never disable System Restore as I find it to be very useful - when it works. But it does work more often than not in my experience.

 

That's the point. I was having SR enabled but when I needed it it always brought some issues, some things on my PC worked fine, some didn't. So I ALWAYS had to restore using Macrium or Veeam, so I disabled SR as a result.

 

Now Windows is a never ending BETA ever since Windows 10 and the customers are working for Microsoft to test their OS without being paid. One would think that the OS built in system restore ought to be more reliable than 3rd party solutions heh?

 

I have always thought the opposite, ie features built into the OS by Microsoft tend to be inferior to dedicated, third-party applications. That's what drives the development of apps dedicated to performing specific tasks. That has been especially true with regard to security software and "utilities".

 

Starting with version 1709 of Windows 10, Microsoft recommended that users use full-disk backup solutions from other vendors.


https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/planning/windows-10-deprecated-features

 

System Restore is not meant to be a backup solution. It is for rolling back an undesirable change. A failed update, a botched install, or similar. Sometimes those things don't need a full restore, and most folks aren't backing up. It can be a lifesaver if you get a request from someone not highly skilled to fix their PC with no backups available. If you can image your machine do so, but SR was not meant to substitute that. I have found it to work reasonably well from Windows 7 forward. When it started in ME it did not work very well.

 

System Restore has indeed changed the way that it has worked through the years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Restore

Acadia

 

I just tested a System Restore point. It did a fairly good job but it took 12 times longer than restoring an image. I haven't used it since Win ME.